Paradise Lost: How Drug Traffickers Colonized Ecuador
When the Ecuadorian Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated on August 8th, 2023, a mere 10 days before scheduled elections, the world became aware of sleepy Ecuador’s downward spiral.
The country that for years seemed to escape the violence that plagued its drug-producing neighbors, Colombia and Peru, was now in freefall.
How did it come to this?
For Ecuadorians, the beaker has been heating up for some time.
Only a few weeks before Villavicencio’s assassination, Agustín Intriago, the Mayor of the coastal city Manta, arguably Ecuador’s 4th most important city, was murdered in broad daylight while visiting constituents.
Almost every week since the end of the pandemic, Ecuadorian newspapers tell the stories of targeted assassinations.
Initially, these murders were dismissed by the police as “score-settling between gangs,” a narrative designed to provide civilians with the guise of safety.
The story was easy to spin.
After all, the country’s prison system witnessed various gang-related massacres over the past two years in which over 400 people were murdered, including many individuals awaiting trials. Some even died with unprocessed release slips in their hands.
The score-settling narrative, combined with the prison murders, led many to believe that the violence was simply a war taking place in the shadows.
Soon, however, it became clear that the perpetrators of the violence were not simply fighting for territory amongst themselves.
Individuals who worked at the country’s main ports have been frequently targeted. Hospital administrators have been killed on their way home from work. Candidates for office, as well as elected officials, have been killed while going about their business. Judges and prosecutors have been shot in broad daylight. Eight politicians representing numerous political parties were killed over the past year.
In addition to the targeted killings, there is senseless violence against average citizens.
Thieves shot a father in front of his young daughter on the street after he complied by giving up his phone and wallet. The video was circulated by El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele and provoked outrage across Latin America. Vacunadores or extortionists harass local businesses, large and small, and apply capital punishment to those who refuse to pay.
Sometimes, the people fight back, and stories of lynchings are frequent. Though these acts of revenge may be satisfying for people who feel abandoned by the police, they can sometimes target the wrong person.
The police make arrests, but often, criminals are released immediately by corrupt judges.
Even if they go to jail, protected criminals have little downside as gangs run the prisons. In recent raids of prisons, the police have found grenades, machine guns, luxury items, and pigs. In one prison near Cuenca, the inmates built themselves an indoor swimming pool.
In the battle against drug gangs, the police are not only overrun; in some cases, they are complicit.
Usually an ally of the current Ecuadorian government, The United States Embassy announced in December 2021 that it was canceling the visas of numerous “narco generals,” or high-ranking active and inactive police officers the US suspects of having been corrupted by the drug gangs.
Middle and upper-class Ecuadorians talk of leaving. Areas previously considered safe, including gated communities, have experienced horrific robberies, bursting the bubble of the illusion of safety. YouTube is awash with ads from lawyers offering assistance to obtain a visa for the US and Canada.
Poor Ecuadorians have become the third largest group of migrants, behind Venezuelans and Haitians, crossing the dangerous Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia to reach the United States. US politicians, including New York Mayor Eric Adams and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, have noticed the surge of Ecuadorians in their jurisdictions.
Socializing in Ecuador nowadays can feel pretty bleak. Family and social events quickly turn into gossip sessions about express kidnappings. Whatsapp and X (formerly Twitter) are awash with videos of robberies.
As a defense mechanism, people turn to victim blaming. “Why was she driving there at night?” is what you hear people say to shield themselves from the possibility that they, too, may become a victim.
However, not everyone agrees that the current state of affairs is permanent. Like squirrels unable to comprehend the speed of cars, our analytical skills fail us as we try to understand what is happening and where it is leading us.
Some people feel the current moment represents a blip that will soon pass, and order will be restored. Others can’t wait to leave. No consensus has emerged.
For some time, people have been commenting that Ecuador is becoming like Colombia was in the 80s. A few weeks ago, two car bombs exploded in Quito during the early morning hours, adding credence to the argument.
Colombia is a fair reference: to understand the origin of Ecuador’s current violent turn, we must return to Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement.
Before 2016, most drug trafficking in Colombia was managed by the country’s leading rebel group, the Revolutionary Colombian Armed Forces, or FARC, for their initials in Spanish.
Initially a leftist movement, over time, the FARC abandoned all moral authority and became a brutal & violent actor in its effort to monopolize drug trafficking.
When, in 2016, then-Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos (2010–2018) and the FARC leadership agreed for the FARC to lay down arms, the government was meant to implement a far-reaching peace agreement that was designed to provide justice, re-integrate fighters, and bring about reconciliation.
Santos left power in 2018, and his successor, Iván Duque Márquez, a right-wing idealogue, did everything he could to sabotage the peace accord, including dragging his feet on the agreement’s implementation.
During this period, many former fighters returned to the jungle to take up arms, either because they found no route to reintegration or because they saw a financial opportunity: a multi-billion-dollar-a-year business run for years as a virtual monopoly was now wide open, and many of the former fighters knew precisely how the business operated.
At the same time, over the past 20 years, power in the drug industry has shifted from the producers, the Colombian gangs, to the distributors, the Mexican gangs.
Unlike in Colombia, where cartels were established in places like Medellin and later Cali, Mexico’s experiment with cartels didn’t last. To this day, the country is held hostage to the violence born of the deadly competition between criminal enterprises.
As a result of former rebels taking up arms to compete for the remnants of the FARC’s abandoned business empire, Mexican gangs quickly found local partners to produce and transport cocaine.
With competing enterprises looking for advantages over rivals, Ecuador, all of a sudden, became an attractive opportunity for territorial acquisition.
After all, Ecuador is a small country with weak institutions, wildly corrupt officials, subsidized fuels (a key ingredient in processing cocaine), and easy access from the Amazon jungle, where drugs are produced, to the Pacific Ocean, where they’re transported to Mexico and then to the United States.
Moreover, because of the high poverty rates in places like Esmeraldas province along the Colombian border, there’s enough despair and lack of opportunities to provide a wealth of labor for the drug gangs, either through desperation or coercion.
Though Ecuador has always had gangs, their business has boomed thanks to their newfound Mexican business partners.
Ecuadorian gangs help transport cocaine through the country. Once the drugs reach the coast, they are sometimes loaded onto fishing vessels that make their way toward the Galapagos islands. There, boats refuel using Ecuadorian subsidized gasoline, then continue up the coast toward Central America.
Other times, the product is hidden in containers carrying products like bananas meant to be exported through Ecuador’s busy ports in Manta, Guayaquil, and Puerto Bolívar. The targeted killings of port authority workers are likely tied to the victims' unwillingness to compromise shipments or their decision to cooperate with rival gangs.
Though Ecuador is now feeling the effects of becoming a logistics hub for the drug trade, that is not to say the drug trade wasn’t always present. Likely, the drug trade has continuously operated in Ecuador with government complicity.
For example, many in Ecuador accuse former President Rafael Correa (2007–2017) of having been complicit in allowing the FARC to use the country as a drug transit center.
Their arguments go like this: First and probably unfairly, they point out that Rafael Correa’s father was a convicted drug mule.
Then they point out that, upon being elected President, one of his first moves was to shut down a US air base used to monitor drug trafficking in the Pacific Ocean.
In 2007, a plane known to Mexican authorities as belonging to drug traffickers was inexplicably allowed to land in Ecuador and to stay in an Air Force hanger for three weeks. Mystery surrounds the plane’s presence in the country despite warnings from Mexican authorities.
Then, in 2008, Colombian officials detected the presence of the FARC’s leadership in Ecuadorian territory.
Instead of working with the Correa government to capture the rebels, then-President Álvaro Uribe bombed the jungle encampment, much to the indignation of the Ecuadorian President. The FARC’s longtime high commander, Raúl Reyes, was killed, and the organization was significantly weakened.
Oddly, the Colombian authorities didn’t trust their Ecuadorian counterpart and preferred international condemnation for violating their neighbor’s sovereignty over coordinating a joint effort.
In 2012, Italian officials discovered drugs shipped in the Ecuadorian Foreign Office’s diplomatic pouch, usually only accessible to Ecuadorian government officials.
In 2018, Ecuador “legalized” many of the country’s outlawed gangs.
Some former gang leaders became political operators, including Ronny Aleaga, a Correísta legislator who, in 2023, was pictured in a pool in Miami with individuals with ties to the drug trade and high-profile corruption operations.
In 2023, the now-exiled former President campaigned aggressively against a referendum that would have enabled the government to extradite wanted drug dealers. Despite security registering as the country’s #1 issue entering into October 2023’s Presidential elections, Correa’s candidate and party have inexplicably made non-extradition a vocal part of their platform.
Lastly, people point to Correa’s close relationship with the Venezuelan government, which the US has repeatedly accused of participating in drug trafficking, as evidence of complicity via guilt-by-association.
None of these accusations represent a smoking gun in and of themselves, but they give cause for raised eyebrows.
Correa would retort that under his government, Ecuador was safe.
What’s different now, as opposed to 2007–2017, however, is that a once consolidated business of drug trafficking is an open and competitive business with numerous small actors using violence to gain territory and favorable conditions, and their reach extends to the country’s highest authorities.
Current outgoing President Guillermo Lasso was elected on an anti-corruption agenda. Tired of Correa and his surrogates, Ecuadorians gave the wealthy businessman Lasso a chance to govern on his third try for the presidency.
Initially, Lasso was a success. After the inept administration of Lenin Moreno left Ecuador as the world’s most impacted country by COVID-19, Lasso helped the country become a leader in vaccination rates.
While his administration focused on procuring vaccines from places like China, he entrusted the private sector with distributing the vaccines, and his strategy worked.
Soon, though, Lasso proved himself to be an unsavvy political operator, making misstep after misstep and inspiring few.
Two and a half years into his mandate, a corrupt congress led by Correa’s party made it their mission to remove Lasso from office. Rather than face their judgment, Lasso invoked a constitutional mechanism to call for new elections. Facing meager approval ratings, Lasso chose not to run again.
And part of what sunk Lasso was his unwillingness to stand up to corruption when it mattered.
An archived police report pointed to the Albanian mafia's ties with a businessman close to Lasso’s inner circle.
A local media outlet then reported that a certain businessman and Lasso’s brother-in-law were responsible for appointing high-level government authorities and were selling the positions to the highest bidder.
At first, Lasso demurred, denying the charges against his brother-in-law and defending his honor.
Soon, though, the accusations became untenable, and it was clear Lasso was not up to taking on corruption.
The case turned dark when the accused businessman, who had connections to the Albanian mafia and previous drug charges against him, was murdered alongside his girlfriend and a friend in a beech house that belonged to the son of one of Guillermo Lasso’s business partners.
Though there is no suggestion Lasso was involved in the drug trade, it’s clear that drug traffickers had penetrated his inner circle and exercised significant influence. On Lasso’s watch, drug violence spun out of control, and he was helpless to stop it.
Finally, the key to understanding the increase in violence in Ecuador is understanding how criminal gangs work.
First, gang leaders have a single goal: to launder enough money to ensure their families enjoy legitimate fortunes for generations to come.
For this reason, Ecuador’s dollarized economy and weak enforcement have made it easy for drug traffickers to launder their wealth through industries like real estate, illegal mining, the illegal timber trade, and many others.
In 2022, the government agency responsible for tracking financial crimes (UAFE) received 830 reports of unjustifiable increases in wealth. Sixty-nine cases resulted in investigations, and only six were convicted.
Lately, Ecuadorian gangs have found government contracts the ideal vehicle to launder money.
For example, the inputs, such as cleaning supplies, are small and hard to trace for a hospital cleaning contract. The output is clean, guaranteed money that can easily be distributed to shareholders.
Some suspect the targeted assassinations of hospital administrators and politicians, such as the mayor of Manta, go back to those individuals either refusing to grant government contracts to specific gangs or their choice to grant those contracts to the wrong gangs.
Ecuadorian gangs were reasonably weak before their newfound working arrangements with the Mexican drug gangs. Working alongside their Mexican customers, they became wealthier, more sophisticated, and emboldened.
Getting a $20 bill from a cocaine buyer in New York back to the individuals in the supply chain is a logistical challenge. As a result, the Mexican gangs often pay their suppliers a percentage of the product, which the local gangs then market aggressively in areas with little state presence. Such is the ferocity of their work that they’ve even killed social media influencers who encourage people to stop using drugs.
Other times, small planes fly from Mexico to Ecuador and deliver arms and ammunition before picking up drugs for the return leg. One helicopter pilot I spoke to said, “We see the narco planes all the time. We’re even on the same radio frequencies. We can’t say anything though [to the police] because, if we do, we’re dead.”
With access to new firepower, local gangs have aggressively gone after each other, leaving many innocent victims in their wake. They’ve also attacked the police and the military as a sign of force. Their extortion rings are omnipresent, targeting businesses large and small. Their control of the prison system represents another business line. And as the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio shows, they’re bold, undeterred, and unafraid.
Where does Ecuador go from here?
As mentioned, the current Ecuadorian government is on the way out, and though Fernando Villavicencio was unlikely to win the presidency, his death had inevitable repercussions for who comes next.
Villavicencio was an anti-corruption crusader more well-known for what he opposed than for what he stood for. He was likely running third or fourth in the polls at the time of his death days before the election.
When he was alive, Fernando Villavicencio consistently denounced the corruption of the Correa government, especially corruption within the state oil company. Correa responded by persecuting Villavicencio, at one point forcing him into hiding in the Amazon.
When Villavicencio was killed, numerous tweets and videos resurfaced of Rafael Correa threatening his life, including one tweet where Correa said, “soon your party will be over,” and a video where he said, “Our revenge will be overwhelming.”
As a result of their leader becoming a suspect in Villavicencio’s death, Correa’s candidate, Luisa Gonzalez, and her party lost steam, though not before earning their way into the second round of the Presidential election and taking a significant number of seats in the next Congress.
Their opponent is the young businessman and scion Daniel Noboa. The son of a five-time presidential candidate and the grandson of the country’s most famous industrialist, Daniel Noboa, will likely inherit Ecuador’s largest fortune but has chosen to go after the one thing he can’t buy: the presidency. In the meantime, Noboa has a slight advantage over Gonzalez, though much can change before the run-off election on October 15, 2023.
Little is known about Noboa aside from his lineage. He appears to be at odds with his MAGA-adjacent running mate, suggesting poor judgment in his first significant decision, and he’s made disparaging remarks about women getting pregnant to get handouts.
Whatever the election result, the new president will hold office for only weeks before the campaign period will commence again.
The current election is a special election to complete Lasso’s unfinished term. As such, many analysts see the 2023 election as a trial run for the 2024 election.
One strategy we’ll likely see replicated in the upcoming elections is security-based populism based on the success of El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele.
Bukele has garnered favor across Latin America for his heavy-handed tactics in tackling gang violence, including mass arrests, degrading treatment of prisoners, and frequent attacks on human rights defenders.
Bukele has successfully driven down crime rates in El Salvador. Still, it has come at a high cost: many innocent people have disappeared in El Salvador’s prison system without ever facing trial. News outlets have had to flee the country due to state harassment, institutions have lost all semblance of independence, and corruption is rife.
The fourth-place candidate in Ecuador’s most recent elections, Jan Topic, a political novice and another scion of a wealthy family, tried to replicate Bukele’s strategy without much success. If crime worsens, he may be more successful next time around. With Argentina also turning towards an extremist candidate, Ecuadorians may lose their patience and follow the regional trend by opting for a simple answer to a complex problem.
Unfortunately, the devil is in the details: authoritarianism does not give you competent policing, corruption-free judges, or an efficient judicial system, all required to create an effective, long-term strategy against crime. Whatever the solution to the current problems, Ecuador must tackle corruption since corruption inhibits the government from delivering on its most basic functions.
As the rush of Latin American migrants to the US border continues to act as a lightning rod issue in American politics, one hopes that at some point, the US government may consider what’s causing them to flee their homes in the first place.
Then, they may conclude that the current strategy for managing the war on drugs has the opposite of the desired effect. Drug gangs are getting stronger, taking more territory, and destroying more and more to protect their entitlements.
Latin American leaders might do more to apply pressure: recently, Mexicos’s President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), and Colombia’s President, the former guerilla Gustavo Petro, came together to call for a re-think of the continental drug strategy. Unfortunately for the cause, AMLO is on the way out, and Petro is navigating multiple crises that threaten his presidency. Momentum would not seem to be in their favor.
In the meantime, Ecuadorians remain stubbornly resilient, partly because the country has faced and emerged from many crises before.
In recent years, Ecuador has suffered paralyzing protests, the horrific fallout from COVID-19, alongside volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
Between 1996 and 2007, the country had nine different presidents, three of whom were overthrown. In 1999, the country’s financial system collapsed, resulting in the adoption of the US dollar as the country’s official currency.
Though shaken, Ecuadorians have not given up. They live in one of the most beautiful countries in the world with unquantifiable potential. Ecuadorians do not necessarily agree on much, but they agree on one thing: that Ecuador is worth fighting for.
